Lilia: A Heart-Wrenching Tale of Love, Bravery, and Triumph Amidst Conflict

Missy MacKintosh: I received Lilia for Christmas and I have never read a book so fast in my entire life. It will leave you in tears on so many levels. This book seriously needs to be made into a movie. I'm so excited to the sequel 😍

Canada on Jan 06, 2024

DomenicDomenic: This is a well written book. The moment I picked it up, I was engaged, and I couldn’t put the book down. There was a lot of research completed by the amount of details captured in this book. This should be a top seller, well written, and well done Linda.

Canada on Jan 04, 2024

Lisa Branson: The fact that this book is so very true forces your emotions to truly “feel” the difficult childhood of a strong, brave girl. I learned things I did not know, and at times, I cried with the realness of the tapestry of this outstanding book. Well written.

United States on Jan 03, 2024

Kindle Customer: My hearts ached for Lilia as a child who lost so many loved ones, Arturo and Erminio and Eliseo, never really knowing her sisters who where sent away to work as maids to make money for the family. It was a life of hardship for a young child/young woman. But a feeling of love for family shines through these pages.

United States on Oct 08, 2023

Linda L. OliphantLinda L. Oliphant: Lilia is a family affair in that the author is also the daughter of the main character, Lila. Linda Ganzini probably grew up with these stories, snippets and pieces of her mother’s childhood to young adult throughout her own childhood. These are stories of love, courage, fear, sadness, joy and survival of one family in the rumbling and foreboding shadows of WWII in a small Italian village. The story begins in Italy in 1939. It’s told through the many eyes of the Meneguzzi family giving us much insight into the day to day routines. As the rumbles of war grow louder so does the uncertainty and fear.

Young Lilia’s story is stirring and heart wrenching at the same time. She is a child herself taking care of younger siblings. Life is harsh but there is still much joy in the simple everyday things. Her mother is the rock of the family. She is strict, boarding on bitter as she also gave up her childhood. Lila’s father is the balance for the family; providing the core strength and unconditional love that binds them all together.

Lila’s story reads like a memoir….stories told to her daughter many times over the years. It is obvious that events have been tediously...

United States on Oct 15, 2022

Anni Casey: I found Lilia to be a moving story/tribute in so many ways. It could have been my Italian parents and relatives I was reading about. My family comes from a small northern Italian village. My dad became a prisoner of war under the Germans when Italy swapped sides and he was captured by the soldiers he was once allied with. Like many people of that generation, it was too painful to talk about those horrific times and I could only glean snippets here and there until my parents' eyes would glass over with tears.

Lilia helped me to fill in some of the gaps of that brutal period. I felt it was written with raw honesty, not trying to make things more flowery or pleasant for the reader. I cried so many times and questioned whether I should go on, as I imagined my mother and father being exposed to all the horrors that war brings on so many levels.

I recommend everyone reads Lilia. Those dark period need to be remembered so that they aren't repeated. They also need to be told so that new generations can understand the strength that can be found in the human spirit, and also the kindness that can be shown even in the darkest of times.

Thank you Linda and Lilia for...

Australia on Jan 23, 2022

Bonnie: Story of a young girl's everyday hard work and struggles in a small, poor Italian village during WWII. Moving and sad with glimmers of hope.

United States on Aug 31, 2021

A Gothic Writer's reading nookA Gothic Writer's reading nook: From the opening chapter, Lilia had gripped my heart.

Lilia is the fictionalised memoir of Lilia and her family through Nazi occupation in Northern Italy, during WWII. Made more personal by the fact that Lilia is the author's mother, a point that keeps this story grounded in a very real way. (And on a personal note too, as Lilia and my own father were around the same age. Although my father was here in England, an evacuee ripped from his family, I have Italian roots and to know I had family who suffered the same was hard to swallow whilst reading this.)

We first meet Lilia in all her personal strife and hardship at the age of four, a small child with the heavy burden of daily chores and care of her younger brothers. We are pulled into a fierce embrace as we travel through the story of her family, predominantly told through the eyes of this child. There are tears, tragedy, hardship and pain, but there is also laughter and intense love that holds this all together. This is a story of everyday, normal, people just like you and me who face unimaginable horrors of war.

I won't give anything of the story away, knowing the setting and era of the story is enough to...

United Kingdom on Aug 23, 2021

Sherry L. Ross: This is a book that had to be written, was meant to be written and that should be read by everyone. It is a heart wrenching true story of a young girl growing up in Italy under Mussolini’s reign and Hitler’s occupation and it shows you and makes you feel what she and her family endured. It is written with a deep and compelling understanding of Lilia’s and her family’s suffering, and that is no surprise because it is written by Lilia’s own daughter, Linda Ganzini. And what a superb writer Ms. Ganzini is. So when I say this was a story meant to be told, I mean so on every level.

This telling will be a voice for generations to come in showing us what the innocent of Italy endured, often being sent to Nazi concentration camps, suffering in fear during the occupation of their cities and villages, the endless loss of loved ones, deprivations, food shortages and starvation, bombings and a life of fear and hopelessness. My father was stationed in Italy the last 16 months of the war, as a 23-24-year-old American soldier. He would tell me of the suffering he saw on the faces of the people he met in villages across the country, that it was nothing he would ever forget. It...

United States on Jul 10, 2021

Luisa: This is the incredible true story of a little girl called Lilia, to whom war and her mother's grief have stolen childhood, and of her unfortunate family. Overwhelmed by chores, Lilia powerlessly watches her big brothers and her father leave to serve Italy during second World War. Despite these sorrows and much more, she never looses hope and while growing up she still struggles for a better life of joy and love.
The main characters are very well portrayed, their thoughts and feelings are open to the readers, involving them in the characters’life, deep in their feelings in order to understand their situation.
Being Italian, I also appreciated how well Italian traditions are explained and the exact description of everyday life.
Characters thoughts, dialogues, historical situation and descriptions are very well balanced, which gives the narration fluidity and expressiveness.
The story is very touching and penetrating, in a word heartbreaking.
I do recommend this novel: get ready to cry, love, smile, hate, fear, hope and live with Lilia and her family.

Italy on Apr 25, 2021